The present invention relates to a method of managing freight information for performing freight transportation from a consignor to a consignee and a freight management system and more particularly, to a freight information management method and a freight management system which use a contactless information readable IC card as an electronic tag and have many freight loading/unloading base stations so as to be suitable for wide area transport requiring quick and accurate transportation.
In mixed freight transportation services for transport of mixed freight goods of many consignors, as represented by door to door delivery, freight goods are transported from a consignor to a consignee through many stages of base stations. Under the circumstances, with a view to improving the quality of transport service including prevention of irregular conditions such as loss of freight, misunderstood delivery destination and damage, the freight pursuit intending to precisely catch the pass history of freight at each base station is of significant importance.
At the present-day practical level, a system using a bar code has been used widely as a means for realizing the freight pursuit. In the bar code system, the freight pursuit is carried out by printing a bar code indicative of a freight number on a freight slip and reading the bar code on the slip attached to the freight at each pass base station. But, in the bar code system, it is necessary for reading the bar code to align the direction of the freight goods and to scan for read of information freight by freight. Further, technical restrictions are encountered in which only initially registered information can be held or the capacity of information which can be held is small. Consequently, acquisition work of freight pass information is laborious and time-consuming, raising a problem that perfect automation of freight control such as sorting is difficult to achieve without resort to manual labor. Further, owing to these problems, there arises other fatal problems from the standpoint of freight pursuit that a time lag occurs between acquired freight history information and actual freight transit or items in the freight history information are insufficient.
To solve these problems, a freight information management method has been studied recently, according to which an electronic freight slip (electronic tag) utilizing an IC card capable of storing a great amount of information and writing and reading information in a contactless fashion is used in place of the freight slip printed with a bar code. Such a technique as above is described in, for example, JP-A-4-341414. In the literature, when delivery information is stored in an electronic tag in response to an inquiry signal from an electronic reader/writer installed in a truck in a navigation system using the electronic tag and adapted to transmit stored delivery information, the position information of a delivery destination is inputted on longitude and latitude corresponding to GPS information. On the other hand, the truck detects its vehicle position by means of a GPS (Global Positioning System) to display its present position in the form of a present position indication mark on a navigation map displayed on an indicator of a navigation unit and at the same time, displays on the navigation map, as delivery destination, position information of the delivery destination contained in the delivery information read out of the electronic tag and inputted to the navigation unit. According to JP-A-4-341414 as above, even an unexperienced door to door delivery worker can set a delivery route as exactly as an experienced worker does and delivery miss and missing delivery can be prevented.
In the transport information management method using the electronic tag, its application range is not limited to the method applied to navigation and the electronic tag can be utilized effectively by solving problems as below.
(1) When collection request information or the like is written into the electronic tag at a consignor destination, there arises a practical problem that installation conditions in the information system at the consignor destination differ including a site where an electronic reader/writer can be installed, a site where an IC card reader/writer can be installed and a site where only a bar code label printer can be installed.
(2) When a request for changing the delivery destination/date occurs, a plurality of freight goods exist in one order (called lot) or special freight goods such as fragile or precision machinery and instruments are handled, there arises a problem as to how use of the electronic tag should be made in the case as above.
(3) There arises a problem as to how the electronic tag should be utilized in order to quickly deal with irregular conditions such as erroneous arrival, erroneous loading, left-out freight, nonarrival freight and over loading.
An object of the present invention is to provide a freight information management method which can realize freight transportation with high efficiency by using, as an electronic tag, a contactless information readable storage medium.
To accomplish the above object, according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, in a freight information management system having a consignor destination system installed at a consignor destination, base station systems respectively provided at a plurality of base stations a dealer in delivering freight collected from the consignor destination to a consignee, a consignee destination system provided at a consignee destination, a freight information overall management system connected with the base station systems, and an electronic tag attached to the freight to be delivered and being capable of electronically storing freight information necessary for delivery, a collection request inputted by the consignor destination system is recorded on the electronic tag attached to the freight and transmitted to a collection management system in a base station system so as to be received thereby. During collection of the freight, information concerning the collection is recorded on the electronic tag by means of a terminal unit and the collection information is transmitted to the collection management system. The base station system informs the freight information overall management system of the collection information and information concerning the freight passing through the base station. The freight information overall management system acquires a transport history of the freight on the basis of the information sent from an in-base station freight information system and calculates a delivery schedule of the freight and informs it to each in-base station freight information management system.
According to another aspect, in the freight information management system using electronic tags, when an electronic reader/writer is provided at the consignor destination, collection request information and an arrival store name are written into an electronic tag in advance by means of the electronic reader/writer at the consignor destination but when the reader/writer for electronic tag is not provided at the consignor destination, collection request information received at a base station system is stored in a terminal unit used by a collector in charge and the collection request information precedently inputted in a terminal unit is written into an electronic tag at the consignor destination. In the course of transportation of the freight, freight transport history information such as arrival base station name, work end date and person in charge of work is written into the electronic tag by means of the electronic tag reader/writer connected to the aforementioned portable terminal, a on-vehicle terminal or a sorting unit at an end of unloading, sorting or loading work in each base station, so that the freight transport history of each freight may be caught precisely with reality. By comparing the freight transport history information with freight arrival schedule information and the collection information such as special freight handling and appointed delivery date, quick handling of the freight transport and irregular conditions can be realized on the aforementioned practical level.